1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to supply chain management, and particularly to a demand dispatch system and method for supply chain management.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the supply of goods, supply chain encompasses purchase of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of finished products. In the supply chain, customers transmit requests (or demands) that may include a request for a particular quantity of a product by a specific date. The manufacturer plans its schedule according to these received requests to satisfy each customer.
The complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm. For example, demand and capacity management is critical in integrated circuit (IC) foundries to reduce inventory and increase productivity, particularly since the manufacturing process of each IC product is complicated, IC products do not use routine materials, and the cost of wafers and capacity is relatively high.
The key issue in supply chain management is fulfillment of customer demands and guarantee of delivery date when the foundry fully loaded. In practice, however, since the foundry is always under loaded, cost management becomes an important issue (for the management of supply chain functions and operations) to strengthen competitive ability.
Since the IC industry is characterized by high variation, wafer and capacity costs are higher. In addition, products are not routine material, that is, the short life cycle, prompt delivery, and quantity management are all critical in reducing costs. Customers endeavor to control delivery date and quantity through planning and forecasting. Wishing to construct a virtual factory to lower the impact of marketing shifts, and reduce the cost of maintaining capacity, customers frequently overestimate demand in order to meet capacity, and the foundry consequently frequently over-commits in order to reduce order and capacity loss. Since the foundry must prepare capacity and related materials for customer demands in advance, this discrepancy between customer and foundry goals and methods has become a major problem in supply chain management, resulting in impacted cost management.
For a foundry having several fabrications, the best cost management method is to maintain a stable prepared capacity exceeding customer demand for each fabrication. Unfortunately, there is no effective dispatch mechanism provided by current supply chain management applications to smooth loading, and accomplish optimized cost management.